Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich – review

Seymour is an unpopular prep-school pupil at Manhattan's middling Glendale Academy until he meets enigmatic new boy, Elliot. Fantastically wealthy, gleefully amoral, and prone to lines such as "Terry and I flew to China five years ago because they were about to outlaw the consumption of monkey brains", Elliot orchestrates Seymour's dizzying reversal of fortune, transforming him not only into the most popular kid at school, but also making him a skilled basketball player, and a successful Harvard applicant. What could possibly go wrong? It's a well-worn plot, familiar to anyone who's caught a minute or two of almost any US teen drama. Yet Rich, himself an erstwhile prep-school boy, Harvard graduate and writer for Saturday Night Live, is intimately familiar with the subject, and nails everything. The novel is assured, deft in its rendering of teen relationships and, perhaps more remarkably, funny without resorting to the kind of gross-out humour common in this sort of setting. All laughs and no barfs, it's a breezy read.

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